Speculations over RJD, Congress MLAs' participation in Nitish Kumar's iftar party

Giving fresh air to speculations, rebel RJD legislator Maheshwar Prasad Yadav and Congress MLA Shakeel Ahmed Khan attended the iftar party organised by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at his residence in Patna on Tuesday.

Yadav represents Gaighat Assembly constituency in Muzaffarpur, while Khan is an MLA from Kadwa Assembly segment in Katihar district in Bihar.

Congress and RJD put up a poor showing in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. While Congress managed to bag just one parliamentary seat, the Lalu Prasad-led party drew a blank.

Soon after the announcement of election results, Maheshwar put the onus of the poll debacle on the "dynastic politics" being practiced in the RJD. He asked his party leader Tejaswi Yadav, who is looking after the party affairs after RJD chief was sent to jail, to step down from the post of the leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly.

"Tejashwi Yadav should resign from the post of Leader of Opposition as people are fed up of dynasty politics. The party must give the post to some senior leader. If dynasty politics does not come to an end, the party will break up and a large fragment will go away," he had told ANI.

Congress MLA Khan, however, sought to downplay the political implications of his participation. "I participated in in the feast on the invitation of Nitish ji. His invitation reflects the Ganga-Jamuni culture," he told media here.

Unlike these elections, RJD had won four Lok Sabha seats despite the Modi wave in 2014. BJP-led National Democratic Alliance swept Bihar, bagging 39 of the 40 seats.